Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Austin Sroczenski
Mr. McDowell
English A
10/4/15
A Long Way From Innocence

In 1933, unknown to many parts of the world, Sierra Leone was in the middle of an internal war. As this brutal war continued on, both the Sierra Leone government, and the Revolutionary United Front began to use children as soldiers to fight this battle. The children used in combat are deceived greatly by army generals, in order to turn them into killers. In the memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael undergoes an extreme maturity with the rapid overcome of the war as he is but a young child. At only 12 years old, Ishmael has experienced events that some people in this world will never have to experience in their lifetime. As the generals use vicious tactics

He “vomit[s] and immediately feels feverish”(27), when he sees the remains of a prior battle site. Ishmael is young and cannot believe what he is seeing; however his mentality changes when he is given the option to enter the military. Ishmael feels no other choice but to join the army, and after being moved in, quickly joins the rest of the young soldiers in smoking marijuana and snorting "brown-brown", which is a strong mix of gunpowder and cocaine. He also begins to take pills, which provide him with energy. These drugs are a tactic used by the army generals to desensitize Ishmael to the tragedies he is committing. Ishmael is a child soldier who is addicted to drugs, and along with other child soldiers at the time of combat, relies on drugs to keep him numb during these inhumane acts. When Ishmael He begins he says that the drugs have made killing “easy as drinking water” (122). The drugs have made him fierce and “the idea of death didn’t cross [his] mind” (122). He also stopped forming memories, almost as if his brain did not process what he was actually doing. Even during Ishmaels suffering, as he woke from his dream and “begins shooting in the tent” (120) the corporal and lieutenant “gave [him] more white capsules” (120). Ishmael has become a living being with no humanity left inside him, which is very different from the concerned, innocent child that he once

The military leaders begin to manipulate Ishmael before he even enters the army. When the lieutenant confronts Ishmael, Beah is given an “option” to join the army, or to leave the village. Ishmael joins the army, as he expresses that he had no choice at all. The lieutenant shows Ishmael the body of a diseased man, who was said to have left the village, disregarding the warning from the leader. The lieutenant says that he “decided to show [Ishmael], so that [he could] fully understand the situation [they were] in” (108). He also tells stories about how rebels would “cut off the heads of some family members…force sons to have intercourse with their mothers…and hack new born babies in half”(108), which manipulates this 13 year boy to join the military and “escape” the horrors of the rebels. Another form of mental manipulation used by the military to trick Ishmael is by convincing him to use pure anger in order to kill his enemies. The lieutenant tells Ishmael to practice stabbing the banana trees, “visualize[ing] the banana tree as [his] enemy, the rebels who killed [his] parents and [his] friends” (112). Although the military leader did not know if the rebels had actually killed Ishmael’s parents and friends, he uses this tactic to tap into Ishmaels mind, using his most valued things to anger him. Ishmael says “I imagined capturing several rebels at once,